Increasing the circularity in textiles, plastics and/or electronics value chains

The 2020 circular economy action plan (CEAP) highlights the four material streams textiles, plastics, electronics including ICT equipment, and construction as particularly important with regard to their circularity potential and their environmental footprint. The circularity deficits for these streams are mainly due to the: lack of trust in secondary raw materials; lack of control over supply chains; lacking focus on material efficiency and design for circularity; unsustainable product lifetimes; lack of repair services; price gap between primary and secondary material; lack of secondary material markets; insufficient collection and sorting systems; insufficient and unpredictable input quality for recycling; insufficient information about quality and quantity of materials, including knowledge about possible microplastics pollution and substances of concern, lack of communication along the lifecycle between manufacturers and recyclers; lack of involvement and empowerment of citizens that would allow environmentally informed purchases.

Projects should address the priorities set in the CEAP, which states that “electrical and electronic equipment continues to be one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, with current annual growth rates of 2%. It is estimated that less than 40% of electronic waste is recycled in the EU. Value is lost when fully or partially functional products are discarded because they are not reparable.” Textiles are “the fourth highest-pressure category for the use of primary raw materials and water, after food, housing and transport, and fifth for GHG emissions, as well as one of the highest sources of emissions of synthetic microfibers in the EU. It is estimated that less than 1% of all textiles worldwide are recycled into new textiles.” “In the light of the complexity of the textile value chain, to respond to these challenges the Commission will propose a comprehensive EU Strategy for Textiles.” It will be necessary to boost “sorting, re-use and recycling of textiles, including through innovation”, while “tackling the presence of hazardous substances”. Beside the continuous implementation of the EU plastics strategy, the CEAP has a strong focus on microplastics, but also calls for mandatory recycled content and the controlled use of bio-based, biodegradable plastics and alternative materials. In view of the feasibility problems of plastic recycling, this will require the deployment of technologies that are still in their infancy, such as the various forms of chemical and enzymatic recycling.

Projects should deal with one of the three priority material streams (plastics, textiles, electronics), taking however into account the complexity of some materials currently in use (such as composites) and that the three streams are related and to some extent overlapping (plastics-textiles; plastics-electronics), and that specific solutions might require an integrated approach.

Projects should demonstrate and deploy at large scale innovative solutions and designs for increased quality, non-toxicity and durability of secondary materials and increased share of secondary materials in new products. Projects should demonstrate increased recovery, recycling and upcycling rates and a higher uptake of secondary materials for high value applications. Projects should also demonstrate circular business practices, in particular in the uptake of repair and reuse, remanufacture, product-service-systems, and in the full lifetime of products or services. To achieve this, targeted market size, economic feasibility, cost efficiency and social acceptance need to be addressed. To break down the barriers for this transition, it is important that proposals involve and address the different perspectives of all relevant actors, e.g. manufacturers, retailers, consumers and civil society organisations (CSOs). The projects should consider the use of digital solutions and demonstrate their benefits for increased circularity. Projects should also help produce harmonised and robust methods to assess the amount of recycled content in sectoral products, which is key for a future review of green claims through authorities and consumer organisations. Environmental, social and economic impacts should be assessed from a lifecycle perspective as product, organisation and consumption environmental footprints, using the respective methods developed by the European Commission (Product Environmental Footprint, PEF, should be used for the assessment of the environmental impacts) and through costing methods; relevant data should be fed into the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment, following the specific Environmental Footprint data and format requirements. The functional performance of technologies and secondary materials can be assessed through the EU Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) scheme. Considering the microplastics and microfiber pollution and hazardous substances that are present in the targeted waste streams, their removal from the materials used for the products in concern as well as from the recovered material is crucial, in addition to applying less-polluting production and consumption procedures. Decontamination levels need to be properly addressed and accumulation prevented. All achieved outcomes should be demonstrated using quantitative indicators and targets wherever possible.

Projects should also develop training material to endow workers in this occupational group with the right skillset in order to deploy the new technologies developed. Proposals should consider the development of learning resources for the current and future generations of employees, with the possibility to integrate them in existing curricula and modules for undergraduate level and lifelong learning programmes. The projects should provide contributions to relevant standards or best practices.

Social innovation is recommended when the solution is at the socio-technical interface and requires social change, new social practices, social ownership or market uptake.